Special Envoy to Ukraine Resigns
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We ran the numbers: There are 297 news articles covering this topic. 76% (227) are left leaning, 23% (69) center, 0% (1) right leaning.
On Friday, Kurt Volker, the State Department’s special envoy to the Ukraine, resigned from his position. Volker’s resignation comes just one day after the release of a whistleblower complaint that alleges that President Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden by withholding aid from Ukraine. Volker was named in the whistleblower report; the complainant alleges that he facilitated a meeting between Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, and an advisor to the Ukrainian president in order to avoid discussing the investigation into Biden in official talks. Hours before Volker’s resignation, the House Foreign Affairs Committee announced that they would hold a deposition for him next week. Volker will still be expected to testify before the committee. The House is currently undertaking an impeachment inquiry against Trump in light of the Ukraine scandal. Volker’s resignation was first reported by The State Press, the student newspaper of Arizona State University, where Volker holds the position of executive director of ASU’s McCain Institute.
A right-leaning Fox News article on Volker’s resignation recounts the facts of the Ukraine scandal. It also notes that there is some ambiguity about Volker’s role in the White House’s dealings with Ukraine. According to the whistleblower complaint, Volker sought to contain the damage resulting from Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian leadership. However, the article notes, “a July 19 text message from Volker to Giuliani that was provided to Fox News on Thursday showed that Volker had in fact encouraged Giuliani to reach out to Ukraine.”
Centrist coverage of the resignation from CNN characterizes Volker as a key player in the unfolding Ukraine scandal. The reporter also interviewed Giuliani, who said that Volker put him in touch with Ukrainian officials and that he has text messages to back up his story. Unlike the Fox article, the CNN article makes a point to note that there is no evidence of wrongdoing in Ukraine by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter.
A left-leaning article from the New York Times analyzes at length the various accounts of Volker’s and Giuliani’s roles in the Ukraine scandal. The article tracks the various alleged communications between Volker, Giuliani, Trump, and Ukrainian officials. The article describes Volker as “among the government officials who found themselves in an awkward position because of the search for dirt on Democrats, reluctant to cross the president or Mr. Giuliani yet wary of getting drawn into politics outside their purview.”